Supporters wait for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to take the stage at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Texas on the evening of the Texas primary on Mar. 1, 2016.
Eric Kayne

The Big Conversation

Texas voters turned out en masse on Tuesday, lifting Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton to victories in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries.

Both party contests had generated a high level of interest. Cruz desperately needed a win to bolster his argument that Republicans should rally around him as the best alternative to Donald Trump. Clinton, meanwhile, wanted to leverage her longtime ties to Texas Democrats to solidify her advantage over Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination.

Texas voters came through for both candidates in a big way. On the Republican side, participation had surged past 2.5 million with more than 80 percent of precincts counted. Cruz had won 1.1 million votes. Clinton, meanwhile, had taken close to 900,000 votes out of almost 1.4 million votes cast.

But for all the talk of high turnout spurred by newcomers to the process, down ballot incumbents fared well for the most part. House Speaker Joe Straus won his re-election contest handily. Two close allies, state Reps. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, and Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, also won. Cook's win, though, was dramatic as he trailed the challenger Thomas McNutt for most of the evening before posting a final winning margin of 222 votes.

Anti-Straus incumbents also did well with state Reps. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, and Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, both winning easily despite drawing organized opposition from establishment elements in the party.

The House incumbents who lost Tuesday night were split more or less evenly between Straus allies — Marsha Farney, R-Georgetown, and Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball — and anti-Straus members — Molly White, R-Belton, and Stuart Spitzer, R-Kaufman.

And despite speculation that some incumbent Supreme Court justices and GOP congressmen might get caught up in an anti-incumbent tsunami, they all held on to their seats with varying degrees of ease.

For fuller details, check out the coverage by Tribune staffers in the Must Reads section below.

Trib Must Reads

Supreme Court To Hear Arguments on Texas Abortion Law, by Alexa Ura — After a long legal journey, a challenge to Texas' 2013 abortion law reaches the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday with oral arguments set over the constitutionality of restrictions collectively known as House Bill 2. Here's a primer.

Republican Presidential Race Boosts Primary Turnout, by Terri Langford — Voting turnout in Texas surged on Tuesday with the highest number of Republican voters making it to the polls for the party's primary in more than a decade, thanks largely to a volatile presidential party contest.

In Texas Congressional Races, Incumbents Stay Safe, by Morgan Smith and Abby Livingston — Despite some handwringing over primary challengers — and the unpredictability wrought by a presidential primary election’s high voter turnout — members of the Texas congressional delegation managed to hold on to their seats Tuesday.

Despite Support, Former Lawmaker Ousted From Statewide Race, by Jim Malewitz — Former Texas Rep. Lon Burnam went into Tuesday’s Democratic primary for a spot on the Texas Railroad Commission with a litany of high-profile endorsements. But the longtime Fort Worth lawmaker will exit the race empty-handed.

Hillary Clinton Projected to Defeat Bernie Sanders in Texas, by Abby Livingston and Jamie Lovegrove — The Texas Tribune projects that Hillary Clinton has easily won a majority of the statewide vote in the Texas Democratic primary, dominating her rival for the party's nomination, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Cruz Claims Texas, Oklahoma Wins, by Patrick Svitek — Ted Cruz on Tuesday added two more wins in the Republican presidential primaries, claiming victory at home and in Oklahoma in an otherwise disappointing night for a campaign that had hoped to be closer than ever to the nomination by now.

• The Tribune's Evan Smith, Abby Livingston, Patrick Svitek and the Texas Politics Project's Jim Henson are joining Ross Ramsey for a special live post-primary edition of TribCast. The conversation starts at 8 a.m. at the Austin Club, and will be live streamed for those who can't attend in person.

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